“Three Hitmen and a Baby” is author Rob Hart’s third entry in his extremely popular, clever, and unique “Assassins Anonymous” series. And if it sounds like a novel you may want to read, don’t worry if you haven’t read the first two. This one is an effective stand-alone wherein the author explains in detail all the foundations of the organization of ex-criminals, killers all, who comprise the group AA: Assassins Anonymous.
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“An Ordinary Sort of Evil” is the fifth book in the very clever “Rip Through Time” series by Kelley Armstrong. It’s as gripping and engaging as the earlier novels. The main character, Mallory Mitchell (Atkinson) is the first person narrator, and that narrative device helps us understand her thoughts as she recognizes the necessity of behaving like a 19th century housemaid-turned-assistant even though she’s really a 21st century police detective. The other main character is Dr. Duncan Gray.
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Melinda Leigh’s newest mystery is the first novel in her new thriller series that is set in upstate New York, where many of her series are set. In “You Can Tell Me,” there are some characters from a past series, but if, like me, you haven’t read that series, don’t worry. You won’t feel lost at all. The main character, Olivia Cruz, is a true crime writer, and she’s about to be thrust into the middle of an all-too-true crime.
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Regarding author Wolf Haas’s novel, “Short Circuit”: It’s genre-less. It boasts much suspense, but suspense is by no means its major element. It’s certainly not a murder mystery though there are a couple of murders that play a fairly important role in the plot. It definitely is not a comedy even though I smiled and laughed all the way through it. It would be selling the novel short and missing the whole point if we were to label it a character study even though its two protagonists are wonderful characters. Can we label it anything, then? Yes. It’s a puzzle. And “puzzle” is not a genre. But reading the entire novel will, I suspect, leave you puzzled; and that puzzlement, I am quite sure, was the author’s intent.
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“Enormous Wings,” the new novel by Laurie Frankel, should come with a warning: This book will make you angry on behalf of women who are treated as second class citizens and denied their rights. But in addition to feeling anger, the story of Pepper Mills, a septuagenarian who has recently moved to Vista View Retirement Community in Austin, Texas, will have you smiling as you admire her spunk and her wry sense of humor, and, of course, the incredibly ridiculous situation in which she finds herself enmeshed.
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Katherine Center has cleverly titled her newest rom-com, “The Shippers.” The setting is a cruise ship, so in that sense the title is logical. But I learned a new term: “ship” is slang for relationship. To be specific, the verb means wishing for two people to be together; the noun is the actual romantic pairing. In this novel, the romantic couple that is being “shipped” appears to be clear from the start, but as we know, things in fiction (and real life) are not always what they appear to be.
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“The Last Mandarin” is a gripping, high-octane rollercoaster ride as authors Louise Penny and Mellissa Fung keep the danger on the front burner with tension that doesn’t abate until almost the last page. From the White House to Beijing, from noodle shops in Hong Kong to the necropolis of the first emperor of China, the jockeying between world superpowers is mind-bending.
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Catherine Ryan Hyde’s thought-provoking novels force readers to consider their lives and their own values and morals. They are not thrillers with fast, action-filled pages that drive the plot forward. Her newest novel, “Come Back to the World,” is one that is filled with quiet retrospection and conversations about life. It’s about a world-famous author who after her debut book rocked the publishing world, disappeared.
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“The Right to Remain” is author James Grippando”s twentieth Jack Swyteck novel and my first experience with the author and his protagonist, criminal defense attorney Jack Swyteck. And the very good news is that Grippando makes the reader so aware of all of the characters’ strengths, flaws, beliefs, and concerns that we get to know them well during the course of the novel and don’t for a moment miss the backgrounds provided in the first nineteen. As a stand-alone legal/suspense piece of work, it’s a riveting page-turner from beginning to end.
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“The Calamity Club” by Kathryn Stockett is many things: it’s a riveting historical fiction, it’s a powerful narrative about struggles to survive during the Depression, it’s a shocking glimpse into the treatment of women during the 1930s, and it’s about the different ways women fight to survive in a world that’s filled with oppression, denigration and condescension.
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Author Matt Witten’s new mystery novel, “51%,” is both scary and suspenseful, and it points clearly to a problem which presents a major trap for America. No, it’s not about the potential takeover of the country and the world by artificial intelligence. That subject has already been treated in numerous articles, essays, videos, and some excellent novels. But in “51%,” an equally dangerous trap for the U.S.A. is at the heart of this complex novel. This time, it’s the all-too-likely takeover of the country by the world of corporations and powerful syndicates, groups of those companies and institutions. Even as the U.S. exists right now, huge corporations are so ubiquitous and so powerful that it sometimes feels hopeless to attempt to overcome their power. And that is essentially what this novel is about.
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When we think of letters, and perhaps especially “last letters,” we think of heartfelt correspondence between people sharing ideas and emotions. We don’t usually think of the board game Scrabble and the letters we use when playing that game. The main characters in “The Last Letters of Sally and Walter” meet at an independent living community when Sally decides to try attending the Scrabble club one evening.
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